“Course I don’t. I don’t mean anything. A fellow like that!” Jenny laughed a little, woundingly.
“What’s the matter with him?” Savagely, Emmy betrayed herself again. She was trembling from head to foot, her mind blundering hither and thither for help against a quicker-witted foe. “It’s only you he’s not good enough for,” she said passionately. “What’s the matter with him?”
Jenny considered, her pale face now deadly white, all the heat gone from her cheeks, though the hard glitter remained in her eyes, cruelly indicating the hunger within her bosom.
“Oh, he’s all right in his way,” she drawlingly admitted. “He’s clean. That’s in his favour. But he’s quiet ... he’s got no devil in him. Sort of man who tells you what he likes for breakfast. I only go with him ... well, you know why, as well as I do. He’s all right enough, as far as he goes. But he’s never on for a bit of fun. That’s it: he’s got no devil in him. I don’t like that kind. Prefer the other sort.”
During this speech Emmy had kept back bitter interruptions by an unparalleled effort. It had seemed as though her fury had flickered, blazing and dying away as thought and feeling struggled together for mastery. At the end of it, however, and at Jenny’s declared preference for men of devil, Emmy’s face hardened.
“You be careful, my girl,” she prophesied with a warning glance of anger. “If that’s the kind you’re after. Take care you’re not left!”
“Oh, I can take care,” Jenny said, with cold nonchalance. “Trust me!”
vii
Later, when they were both in the chilly scullery, washing up the supper dishes, they were again constrained. Somehow when they were alone together they could not quarrel: it needed the presence of Pa Blanchard to stimulate them to retort. In his rambling silences they found the spur for their unkind eloquence, and too often Pa was used as a stalking-horse for their angers. He could hardly hear, and could not follow the talk; but by directing a remark to him, so that it cannoned off at the other, each obtained satisfaction for the rivalry that endured from day to day between them. Their hungry hearts, all the latent bitternesses in their natures, yearning for expression, found it in his presence. But alone, whatever their angers, they were generally silent. It may have been that their love was strong, or that their courage failed, or that the energy required for conflict was not aroused. That they deeply loved one another was sure; there was rivalry, jealousy, irritation between them, but it did not affect their love. The jealousy was a part of their general discontent—a jealousy that would grow more intense as each remained frustrate and unhappy. Neither understood the forces at work within herself; each saw these perversely illustrated in the other’s faults. In each case the cause of unhappiness was unsatisfied love, unsatisfied craving for love. It was more acute in Emmy’s case, because she was older and because the love she needed was under her eyes being wasted upon Jenny—if it were love, and not that mixture of admiration and desire with self-esteem that goes to make the common formula to which the name of love is generally attached. Jenny could not be jealous of Emmy as Emmy was jealous of Jenny. She had no cause; Emmy was not her rival. Jenny’s rival was life itself, as will be shown hereafter: she had her own pain.
It was thus only natural that the two girls, having pushed Pa’s chair to the side of the kitchen fire, and having loaded and set light to Pa’s pipe, should work together in silence for a few minutes, clearing the table and washing the supper dishes. They were distant, both aggrieved; Emmy with labouring breath and a sense of bitter animosity, Jenny with the curled lip of one triumphant who does not need her triumph and would abandon it at the first move of forgiveness. They could not speak. The work was done, and Emmy was rinsing the washing basin, before Jenny could bring herself to say awkwardly what she had in her mind.